Lindsey Davis - Three Hands in The Fountain

'How about Petro?' joked Rubella. 'I always thought he was big, and quiet – and deep!'

'He'd like to see the back of the old hag, but he'd rather catch her out in a felony and throw her to a judge. Milvia's story is that she wants Petronius to find out where her darling mother is. If I can tell her the old bitch is safe, it helps keep the young girl away from Petro.'

'Is it true that somebody put him on his back?' Rubella usually knew the score of any draughts game on his patch.

'Florius heard about the affair. Flaccida told him; that's why they had their bust-up. He decided to make his presence felt at last.'

'Rome can do without Florius thinking big.' The thought of Florius flexing his muscles was sufficient to worry Rubella. Will it affect Petro's attitude to the woman?'

'We can only hope so.'

'You don't sound optimistic.'

I had known Petro a long time. 'Well, I do believe he wants his job back.'

'Funny way of showing it. I gave him an ultimatum, which he seems to have ignored.'

'And you know that,' I pointed out gently, 'because Petronius has been seen going to Milvia's house – by your men. Ever since the Balbinus trial you have had a full-time set of peepers following every move made by Flaccida. But then presumably when she flew away, your man tightened his boot-thongs and followed her to her new roost?'

'I've had to call them off,' Rubella complained. 'She's too clever to give us any leads. It's too expensive watching her – and without Petronius Longus I'm seriously short of manpower.'

'So did you call off the surveillance before she did her flit? Or have the Fates finally smiled on me for once?'

He enjoyed keeping me waiting. Then he grinned. 'They pull out at the end of today's shift.'

I lifted my feet from his table, carefully avoiding his inkpot and sand tray. To add emphasis, I leant forwards and adjusted their positions slightly, aligning them neatly. I don't know whether the bastard felt any gratitude for my restraint. But he did give me an address for Cornella Flaccida.

She had taken herself an apartment in the Vicus Statae, below the Esquiline, near the Servian Walls. To reach it, I had to walk down past the apsidal end of the Circus, through places which had featured so strongly in our hunt for the aqueduct killer: past the Temple of the Sun and Moon, through the Street of the Three Altars, around the Temple of the Divine Claudius. I detoured via the Street of Honour and Virtue and called in hoping to see Marina; she was out. Knowing Marina, I was not surprised.

Flaccida's new doss was a second-floor spread in a clean apartment block. When her husband was convicted and his wealth forfeited to the Treasury, she would have been allowed to keep any money that she could prove was her own – her dowry, for instance, or any purely personal inheritance. So although she was claiming to be destitute, she had already set herself up with slaves, beaten black and blue as her staff always were, and basic furniture. The whole show had been decorated with co-ordinating frescos and the kind of Greek-style vases that are turned out in sets in Southern Italy for householders who just want to fill up space aesthetically without the bother of hunting in flea-markets. It looked as if Flaccida had established her bolthole some time previously. I bet neither Milvia nor Florius had ever been told it was here.

She was in. I could tell that because her vigiles tail was lurking in a street food shop opposite. Pretending I didn't know his presence was supposed to be a secret, I called out and waved to him. Flaccida probably knew he was there. If the surveillance was about to be lifted, blowing his cover could do no harm in any case.

I was allowed in, if only to prevent me alarming the neighbours. It was not a home where one was offered sesame cakes and mint tea. Just as well. I would have felt unsafe accepting anything into which poison could have been stirred.

To celebrate her freedom from the younger generation, the doughty dame must just have had her hair touched up, in not quite the same blonde as its previous shade. She lay sprawled on an ivory couch, wearing garments in clashing purple and deep crimson whose purchase must have made a large number of fullers and dyers extremely happy. When she sent this outfit to the laundry there was going to be an outcry from other customers whose clothes came back streaky after the hideous colours bled.

She made no attempt to rise and greet me. That may have been because her shoes had platform soles several inches deep which must have been crippling to stand or walk on. Or maybe she thought I wasn't worth it. Well, the feeling was mutual.

'This is a surprise! Cornella Flaccida, I'm delighted to see you alive and well. The word is you've been grabbed for dissection.'

'Who by?' Flaccida obviously supposed it was some underworld enemy. She must have plenty.

'Could be anyone, don't you think? So many people harbour a fantasy of hearing that you've been tortured and massacred -'

'Oh, you always get do-gooders!' She rasped with laughter that set my teeth on edge.

'My money would be on Florius or Milvia – though oddly enough it was your daughter who sent out the bloodhound. Her affection for you is so great, she's actually employing me. I shall have to report to her that you are flourishing – though I don't necessarily have to reveal your whereabouts.'

'How much?' she demanded wearily, assuming I wanted a bribe to keep quiet.

'Oh, I couldn't take money.'

'I thought you were an informer?'

'Let's say, I'll be perfectly happy if you join the general move in your family to lay off my good friend Lucius Petronius. I'm just relieved I don't have to add you to the women who have been hacked to pieces and dumped in the aqueducts.'

'No,' Flaccida agreed, unmoved. 'You wouldn't want to see me grinning up at you from a fountain bowl. And I don't want to come plopping out in the hot room of some men's baths, giving the bastards an excuse to make dirty cracks.'

'Oh, don't worry,' I assured her. 'This killer likes his morsels young and fresh.'

Making arrangements and saying goodbye took longer for a fortnight away than it did when we left Rome for six months. My choice would have been not to tell anyone, but there were dangers in that. Apart from the mood of suppressed hysteria in Rome which might cause people to report that the whole family must have been snatched by the aqueduct killer, the weather was still warm and we didn't want my mother to pop in and leave half a sea-bass for us in our best room, with no lid on the plate.

That doesn't mean I did notify Ma. Instead I asked my sister Maia to tell her, after we had gone. Ma would have loaded us down with parcels to take to Great-Auntie Phoebe on the family farm. The Campagna rolls round south and eastern Rome in a gigantic are from Ostia to Tibur, but in Ma's mind only the dot on the Via Latina where her mad brothers lived ever counted. Telling her that we were not going anywhere near Fabius and Junius would be like banging my head on a log-chopping block. For Ma, the only reason for going into the country was to bring back choice crops extracted for free from startled relatives whom you hadn't seen in years.

I was really going for wine. There was no point at all in making a trip to the Campagna simply to chase after a maniac who killed women. Latium was where a Roman boy went when his cellar was low.

'Get some for me!' croaked Famia, Maia's husband, who was a soak. As usual he made no attempt to pay for it. I winked at my sister to let her know I had no intention of complying, though I would probably bring back some cabbages so she could make him hangover cures.

'Artichokes, please,' said Maia. 'And some baby marrows if they're still available.'